So… a certain someone, after beta-reading "Little Faith", railed at me for being a bit of a tease, not letting her see what happened next… Hence the title! bows Your wish is my command, oh mistress!


At this time of the cycle the ship kept to, the corridors were quieter than usual. It was night both on the planet outside and inside the kilometre long vessel floating on the ocean of a tropical little paradise. The handful of men who were strolling along the Arcadia's corridors all tipped a quick salute to the man who walked purposefully towards the stern of the ship, even though few of them had seen military service, and he wasn't their captain. It was just the kind of man he was.

Over six feet tall, well built, wearing a grey silk shirt tucked into silvery pants themselves tucked into the tops of knee length black boots. A holster slung over slim hips and strapped down to his thigh carried a large pistol, silver chased with a skull and crossbones intaglio on the grip. His silvering hair had once been the colour of wet sand, and curled down to the collar of his shirt, still damp from sea spray on the boat from the island of Ventimiglia. Hazel eyes over a patrician nose, and a sensual, generous mouth that had a tendency to smile even at rest. Usually bearded, he tended to shave this off in the tropics, and so was currently clean shaven. Most onlookers would assume him to be anywhere between fifty and a well preserved sixty, but he was slightly over a century older than either estimate.

He was a man whose identification records had contained a multitude of different names over the decades, stretching all the way back to the argument between his parents as to which language his birth would be recorded in over a hundred and fifty years previously. Currently he was content to respond to "Hannibal" - a nomme de guerre he'd assumed when taking command of the organisation he'd started over a century ago, originally to keep track of the man who'd once captained the ship he now strode through as though he owned it.

Which technically, he did. He'd poured enough of the profits from Arcadia Engineering into the Deathshadow Project, after all. And in the process earned the nickname he'd turned into an alias as famous in its way as his wayward younger brother's. The "great white elephants" of the Earth Fleet had had the last laugh on the Admiralty who'd nicknamed its admiral "Hannibal".

Both he, his brother and two of those ships (and as they'd recently discovered, one other captain) had outlived the bloody lot, in the end. Although his brother's existential status was subject to qualification… He smiled as he walked. The current captain of the ship had neglected to remind him - probably in some attempt to drop him right in it regarding certain of his actions over the years - that tonight was the one night of the year his brother would make his appearance, like some nebulous, shadow-shrouded, moody Saint Nicholas making inroads into the wine cellar. Only without the presents.

Another casualty of Earth's destruction, he mused, as he approached the half-size replicas of Schloss Griefenstien's massive oak gates that masqueraded as the doors to the captain's quarters. So many ancient traditions and rituals gone forever, except in his memory. Or his brother's. But then, it wasn't as though his baby brother had been particularly interested in such things.

The doors opened as he approached; not due to any psychic properties, but simply because the ethereal form of the ship's resident nibelung was leaving the room as he drew near. 'Mimay.' He gathered the delicate alien woman into a gentle embrace, although he knew full well the nibelung were a lot more robust than their gracile frames would suggest, there was an inherent nicety to the gesture that he felt compelled to observe.

'Mamoru-san.' She always used the honourifics of his mother's native language, and in truth he'd always preferred them to the guttural German of his father's homeland. 'He's waiting for you.' She slipped past him, gracefully duplicitous as ever, when she wanted to be elsewhere.

'You're not staying?'

She shook her head, causing gentle waves to ripple down the length of her long, pale fine hair. 'Not… this time, I think.'

'What the hell is he up to? We chatted nicely enough over dinner…' But she was already trip-trapping quickly down the corridor, without a backward glance. 'Huh.' He shrugged it off and stuffed his hands in his pockets before striding through the open doorway. 'Harlock - I don't know what you're up to, but this had better be quick, since I believe my annoyingly incorporeal little brother is due shortly.'

'Make that, already here.' In the light Tochiro had designed to make the older Harlock more visible to those who didn't have an overabundance of dark matter in their system, you could even think the black clad form of the man sitting behind their father's ancient desk was as solid as the desk, or the younger looking man sitting on the chaise-longue nearby, one arm draped around the shoulders of the lovely blonde woman sitting beside him, both of them - all three of them - with glasses in their hands.

'Still making inroads into the contents of my wine cellar?' he quipped, as he reached for the decanter on a side table and poured himself a glass. 'Or still filling the bottles back up from the molecular printers?' He took a sip. 'Printers.' He sat down on a comfortably upholstered chair opposite Harlock and Kei and raised a glass. 'A half-way discerning palette can always tell the difference.'

'Snob.'

'You,' he replied, pointing to the speaker with the crystal goblet he held, 'are just a heathen. You've swilled down anything with an abv above eleven without any regard since the age of twelve, and I'm not altogether sure you can even tell the difference between Andromedan rotgut and a fine claret. I've never understood why you found it necessary to clear out my cellars.'

Sitting nonchalantly - almost insolently - in the high backed chair, the corner of his sinfully beautiful sibling's mouth twitched slightly. Shadows pooled around him, blue fire flickering around his black-clad form, and trailing down the fine strands of his mahogany-dark hair. 'Firstly, you exaggerate. Second: It was funny at the time,' his brother replied dryly. 'But even you have to admit it was rather fortuitous in hindsi...' he trailed off. Not even the elder Harlock's stoic facade could hold steady in the face of the suddenly bleak gaze in his brother's hazel eyes. Because there had been things far more precious to both of them that hadn't been rescued from Earth.

'You really do know how to put your enormous feet in it, don't you?' the younger Harlock murmured. The black bird he'd inherited along with the ship looked up sleepily from where it had been sitting with its long beak resting on his leather boots, waddled over to the desk, hopped up onto it, and let off a loud "CAARK" right into the older Harlock's face. He tried to push the beak aside from habit, only for his hand to slide straight through it. 'Told.' Harlock added softly.

'Hardly my fault that Doppler's started running family members through genetic printers,' the elder muttered. 'And whilst we're on the subject of familial indiscretions, aniki… who was it who tagged me for any passing battleship to find?'

Hannibal glared at Harlock, who just smiled smugly. 'Couldn't resist, could you? You had to tell him.'

'Don't have a go at the brat.' The elder Harlock took a long swallow of his wine. 'That's my job. I figured that had to be Maya's handiwork - she always was at the top of her field. The encryption had to be Con's though.'

'So you did know about it?' Kei asked somewhat waspishly. 'You knew we were being targeted all those years? And did nothing?'

He shrugged. 'It was on such a tight band you'd have had to know the frequency - and have the encryption key - in order to track us. It wasn't much of a shock to know Mamoru wanted to keep track of me - but giving that information to Isora?' he jabbed a finger at his brother. 'Now that I take issue with. And all to get the brat here on board… you could have just told me where to pick him up.'

'Hello - sitting right here.' Harlock rolled his eyes - both visible since he'd removed his eyepatch. The bird was currently picking it up in his beak from where it had been lying on the edge of the desk, and was shaking it like a rat. 'If you really can't bring yourself to call me by the name you pretty much shoved at me, then at least use the one my parents gave me.' He took a sip of his own drink. 'Would you still have taken me on board?'

'Why not?' The elder Harlock smiled enigmatically. 'I'd still have been curious to see how it played out. Kei - perhaps you could…' he held out his now empty glass.

'Get your own. You know where the bottle is.'

'At least you don't throw them at my head,' he murmured.

'Not much point, since it would probably just pass…' she stopped, tipped her head slightly on one side, and smiled beatifically. 'Except… you can interact with anything alcoholic, can't you?'

Harlock gently increased the embrace he held her in, and leaned closer to her. 'Let's not,' he stage-whispered in her ear. 'Whether it hits him or something else, it might break, and we both walk barefoot around this room…'

Hannibal left his seat, fetched a fresh bottle from the side and decanted it with the ease of an experienced sommelier. 'I'd say "let it breathe", but since when do you listen?' Since his brother was already reaching for the silver-chased decanter, he settled for perching on the edge of the desk, ignoring his brother's pointed one-eyed glare. 'Barbarian. You always did pick at your food and knock back your booze.'

'Something you might want to think about,' his brother quipped. He jabbed a finger at Hannibal's middle. 'You're looking a little "sturdy" in your old age…' He smirked. 'Quite literally, you really are heading towards being what everyone always said you were - twice the man that I am…' He took a swallow from his newly refilled goblet, then put it down on the desk, his lips twisting into a moue of disgust before he poured it ostentatiously back into the bottle and slammed the cork back in as though to seal the offending substance away. 'Oh… you bastard.'

'What?' Harlock looked from one brother to the other.

'Look at him - so innocent - you had to pick that '57 Riesling, didn't you? It didn't even travel that well from the vine to the vat…'

Harlock got up to take a closer look at the label. 'Huh. I don't recall seeing that one before… I just asked Ali to pull a couple of bottles. That bad?'

'Put it this way,' Hannibal replied with a chuckle as he took up his seat on the chair again. 'You've seen the crap he'll pour down his throat without complaining…?'

'I'm already in a purgatory of my own making, aniki,' Harlock added softly. 'There's really no need to add to it.'

'Oh please. I refuse to be guilted for passing you a hundred and fifty year old vinegar,' Hannibal snorted.

'But not for sabotaging my oscillators?' the elder Harlock shot back.

'Not even that,' Hannibal replied. 'Someone's been a busy little tattle-tale,' he accused, letting the younger Harlock have a meaningful stare, which was shrugged off with the same equanimity common to all three men.

'I had a plan,' his brother added. 'None of you can say for sure it wouldn't have worked.'

Harlock raised his hand. 'Mazone space,' he said quietly, referencing the five devices which had - all unknown to his predecessor, been caught up in a natural disaster a good few decades before he'd laid the last of his explosive eggs in the visible universe. He smiled to himself when the elder dropped his head slightly letting his hair hide his face, which probably had his usual "oh for fuck's sake" expression on it.

'Great plan,' Hannibal replied, nodding. 'Superb. If you're an impatient little boy chucking his toys out of the pram because he just lost a computer game and forgot to press "save" before attempting the level… Which when I come to think of it, pretty much sums you up at times.'

'So you undertook - as always - to save me from myself?'

'Not so much. More so tired of picking up the pieces I decided a little pre-emptive activity would be a better idea. And I didn't sabotage the damned things - I merely ensured that if you were still hell-bent on pulling the plug, I'd have time to talk to you first. Or give you time to come to your senses, whichever came first. We both know Tochiro could have sorted the coding issue out once you knew about it - the sub-space detonator would have easily updated the code remotely. As it happened, in the end, I didn't need to.'

'But you were there, at the end, in the Solar System, I'm guessing?' Harlock asked, looking from one brother to the other. 'I know you were watching on MX-201… I'm assuming you weren't far behind us when we entered the Solar System?'

'Aniki?'

Hannibal sighed. 'I was watching. I didn't expect the carnage you caused at Pluto and Saturn though - but most of that was that idiot brother of Yama's.'

The elder Harlock smirked nastily. 'Took out most of his own fleet firing through a hologramme. Then made the same mistake a second time. I don't think I've ever been gifted with such a massive victory without firing a shot. Fuckwit.' He raised his glass to his brother. 'I think you came up with that one at the Second Battle of Tiamat, in '75?' He smiled fondly and turned to face the younger Harlock. 'He had just six ships, against seventy - even with the Deathshadow 0, the odds were drastically against even getting out alive, let alone taking out the fleet. Tochiro and I were testing the ship that became Arcadia at the time - it was supposed to have been a quick space trial, but someone had leaked the details… Hell - we didn't even have all the weapons on line yet. Which was why we had an escort.'

'Which you played merry hell about,' Hannibal retorted. Spotting Harlock and Kei's rapt attention he sighed. 'It wasn't that big a deal…'

His brother snorted. 'Mamoru the Modest…'

Hannibal ignored him, flicking a hand as though swatting an annoying fly away from his ear. 'This hothead here wanted to charge in, headfirst, with barely a single array of even the optical cannon working. "One from the gut", I believe you called it?'

'That was Tochiro's idea,' he muttered into his goblet, Harlock having taken pity on him and refilled it from a more drinkable vintage. 'We could have broken through…'

'Oh, for crying out loud, it's not as though there isn't enough room to avoid a fight in space if you don't want one,' Hannibal snapped at him. 'How many times do I need to hammer that into your thick skull?'

'At least once more,' Kei purred, letting her former captain have both barrels from her icy blue eyes. 'Since it never seems to sink in…' She smiled sweetly.

'You know, ever since you hauled that little stray on board, Kei, I've noticed a distressing tendency to disobey orders and get a little lippy…'

Kei glared at him. 'In case you hadn't noticed, you're not the captain of me anymore.'

'Play nice,' Harlock murmured in her ear.

'And you turned out to be such a bad influence.' The elder tutted at him. 'Never saw that coming.'

'Yes, you did,' Harlock told him bluntly. 'Otherwise you'd never have left everything in my hands. If after a hundred years you don't know our family's apparently genetic predisposition to a complete and utter disregard for regulations, rules and anything even remotely resembling a quiet life…'

Hannibal raised his hand. Harlock just looked at him. 'Really? You got so bored after Maya died you went and helped launch a coup on Lar Metal!' Hannibal lowered his hand and shrugged. 'Well when you put it like that…'

'Aren't you forgetting Wataru?' Kei interjected.

'Give him time,' Hannibal murmured. 'It took me a few decades…'

The elder Harlock spluttered, raised an eyebrow, gave his brother an unbelieving stare, but said nothing.

'Not helpful,' Harlock told Hannibal. The older man just smiled beatifically and his younger brother had to bury his nose in his goblet again to hide a smile. 'You, stop pretending to be so damn stoic. Don't think I can't see that smirk.'

'Ssh. All of you,' Kei said. She smiled prettily at Hannibal. 'I want to hear more about that battle…'

'I'm rather curious about how Admiral "You don't have to get into a fight" got into a fight,' Harlock admitted.

Hannibal narrowed his eyes. 'Albrecht's right. You can be a little sod, can't you?'

'Took you this long to work it out?'

The Arcadia's captains spoke in unison, frowned at each other, shrugged, and took refuge in their respective wine glasses. Kei burst out laughing. 'Oh… sometimes, you really do see how far the apples don't fall from the tree, don't you?' She wriggled out from underneath Harlock's arm, and settled down next to Hannibal instead. 'Come on Grampy - I want to hear it. Just ignore those two juveniles…'

'I'm still wondering why the Arcadia even has a hologrammatic projector of that strength,' Harlock added. 'Although calling it a hologramme is stretching the definition a bit, since it's capable of fooling -'

'An idiot.'

He ignored the interjection from beyond his desk. 'Battleship sensors and distorting space/time to even give the illusion of a gravity fluctuation. All I got from Mimay was that it was Nibelung tech. Well… couldn't figure that out… And Tochiro just sort of hmmed and hrrrd at me.'

'Look no further.' The elder Harlock waved his currently empty goblet in his brother's direction. 'The good Admiral over there had a hand in a lot of sneaky little additions that weren't on the blueprints… the first thing I knew about this one is him babbling in my ear about giving it a try. But not, as you might think, as a decoy… or a way of shielding our escape. Oh no. Because, for all his sodding incessant belly-aching about my tendency to go all out and never back down from a bloody fight, guess who decided not to back down from the bloody fight? Admiral.'

'After we were blindsided and got caught with our pants down because you decided you knew best, and left the ships on my flank exposed. Commodore.'

The elder Harlock sat back in his chair with a "hah", and crossed his arms in front of the skull and crossbones stenciled on his flightsuit. Then he smiled, the expression lighting up his usually dour face. 'I almost pissed myself laughing when they realised they were shooting at each other. Though I'm not sure it would have worked so well if they weren't in Zone Industries ships - that twat Evgeni never could design a decent sensor array, but was all about the automation. Even the Oceanos and her sister ships had the same flaw…'

'Same company, different generation.' Harlock muttered. 'Did you even know a government department go with the best equipment when they could just pick the lowest bid? Feydar Zone's as much of a liability as his ancestor from what I hear.'

'Helped out by the fact your idiot brother had about as much actual combat experience as a wombat,' his predecessor added. 'Still… it could have been worse. If he'd had the sense to put you in a command position instead of wasting your talents by sending you to kill me, I might have even had a fight on my hands.'

'Hate's a powerful thing,' Harlock replied softly. 'Makes fools of us all…' he didn't look at the other Harlock when he spoke, but the slight twitch of the corner of the man's sensual mouth suggested the little dig wasn't lost on him.

'I didn't have all the facts, otherwise I'd have factored in his hatred for you,' Hannibal told Harlock softly. 'I honestly thought when it came down to the wire, he wouldn't sacrifice you. I hadn't realised it ran so deep…'

'I never really understood just how much, until I first saw the two of you together, after the Mazone affair,' Harlock said softly to the brothers. 'After everything that's happened between you - so much pain, betrayal, and loss - and on a scale I can barely comprehend, compared to mine and Isora's… I listen to the pair of you sometimes, I can see you both hurt, and I struggle to understand why the hell you haven't just gone for each other's throats. Well,' he qualified, 'Hannibal more than you,' he told the elder Harlock. 'Don't argue, you blew up a bloody planet and his family with it. Him marrying your damn widow doesn't even come close. You might want to fight it…' here again he gave the elder Harlock a hard stare, 'but you'd crawl over broken glass for each other.'

Caaaaarkkkk

The bird, forgotten by all of them, had at some point hopped onto the back of the chair the elder Harlock occupied, and had settled down with its head under a wing. Now it stretched out its long neck and in turn shoved its head at each of the three men, accepting a head-scritch rather like a large, feathered cat might. Caark, it said again, sadly, as the elder Harlock's hand passed through its round head.

Kei slipped her arm through Hannibal's and leaned her head on his shoulder. 'Come on, Grandfather - there must be more stories you could tell us about the captain before he became so cold and unresponsive, surely?'

The elder Harlock rolled his visible eye and snorted at her description. She stuck her tongue out at him and he directed his response to the younger man instead. 'Oh, Christ... you do have some Andromedan Red Bourbon on board, don't you? If I can't have any peace and quiet I'd at least like to be thoroughly trashed if I have to listen to him drone on for an hour or more…'

Hannibal threw a cushion at his head, without even looking. It was bang on target, but landed behind the chair the elder Harlock sat on, having passed right through where his head was. 'You can't get drunk.'

'Not for lack of trying,' Harlock drawled, with a pointed look at the number of bottles already lined up on the desk. Not for the first time he wondered where it ended up - actually metabolised? Or raining down a steady patter of mixed beverages out of the sky in some strange caricature of real space somewhere in the dark matter interstices of space-time? But he'd caught what Kei - with a different vantage point - hadn't. The look which had passed between the two brothers, at the mention of that long-ago battle. He picked up Kei's tablet from where it rested on the small mahogany table in front of him, and pretended to read from it. 'Small matter on the bridge. Kei - why don't we just check this out, and pop back in on our way back with something more palatable?' He offered her his hand, careful to angle the surface of the electronic clipboard away from her.

'But…'

'Won't take long,' he murmured near her ear once she was standing at his side. 'Let's just give them a few…' He ushered her, still looking a little bemused, out of the door, which swooshed softly shut behind them.

As if on cue, the Arcadia's background sound effect let out a long, ominous creak of distressed wood.

'Kid's got a good heart,' Hannibal murmured. 'But I don't think Kei will let it go so easily.'

'She's like a terrier with a rat once she senses something off,' his brother replied, swirling the wine in the bottom of his glass around absently, twirling the stem of the goblet in his long fingers. He stared into it bleakly. 'Tiamat. That was the first time I began to understand exactly what it was we'd created,' he whispered hoarsely. 'It was all just theory up to that point. After seeing what those plasma accelerators could do, we'd wanted a weapon capable of countering them… a ship capable of withstanding them.'

'It was us or them,' Hannibal pointed out. 'Neither of us saw that second group pop out of IN-SKIP. You saved the lives of the crews of our escorts - and my crew.'

'Still…'

'I gave you the order,' Hannibal said softly. 'We had no other weapons but the dark matter array - the Deathshadow 0 had lost her main weapons, the escort ships were not in that class.' He drained his own glass in one long swallow. 'If you want to know if I had second thoughts about the whole project after that, the answer is yes. I saw what weaponised dark matter could do, and it scared the shit out of me. And if you want to know if I feel partly responsible for what happened two years later, that answer is also yes.'

Harlock stared at his older brother, a curiously speculative look flitting across his normally impassive features. 'It was always too late by then to put the genii back in the bottle, aniki,' he said softly. 'Have you really been carrying that around with you all this time?' He didn't wait for the reply 'Baka. You could no more have put a stop to the Deathshadow project than you could stand in the way of that Homecoming fleet. The whole galaxy was going up in flames around us…'

'Do you think that's what keeps me awake at night, little brother?' Hannibal asked. He looked haunted, and stared at his hands, where they cupped the goblet he held, just above his thighs. He looked up and across, meeting his brother's cyclopean regard. 'Tiamat has always been there. A reminder, constantly, of a truth I wanted to deny but never could. Not if I wanted to be honest with myself. With you.' His voice cracked slightly on the next words: 'with Miranda.'

'Aniki…' Harlock's voice, normally so unexpressive, or flat out dismissive, held only sympathy. 'No.' He shook his head.

'Yes. Outsiders… they see us, and think we're so different, you and I. "The Accountant and the Pirate". We've heard them all, down the years. The stay-at-home family man and the flamboyant fighter jock… The iceman and the hothead… But we… we know each other better than anyone else ever will. Even those who love us. The fundamental truth is that we are, when it comes right down to it, not so very different. Tiamat was - is - a reminder that in your shoes, under those same circumstances, I might have made exactly the same decision.'

'The difference,' Harlock pointed out, punctuating the words with a gesture with his goblet-holding hand, 'is that you would have thought it through, and tried to find a better way. You tried, remember? Practically shook the Deathshadow 0 apart from what I heard, redlining the engines to Jupiter to take out those plasma accelerators. You don't get to try and shoulder my blame, nii-san. I wasn't listening to anyone that day. My conscience bled out on the floor of the bridge and died in my arms. You raised me to be a better man than I am, but that's no fault of yours.' He smiled self-mockingly. 'You needed better material to work with.'

'Dummkopf.'

Harlock raised his empty glass in salute. 'Guilty as charged. The brat was right though. Despite everything, here we are. Last relics of an old world, and still joined at the hip. It does make you think… Isora's hatred ran so deep over sins that by comparison are petty compared to mine. I'd still not really blame you if you took that Cosmo Eagle out of its holster and blew out what little brains everyone around here seems to think I have.'

'Yama might. It takes forever to get blood and brain tissue out of the mouldings and off those windows,' Hannibal replied with a wry chuckle. They shared sly grins. 'I'm your older brother, I was supposed to protect you. Including from yourself. Even if you didn't want me to,' Hannibal continued softly. 'I still find it hard to wrap my head around the depth of Isora's spite.'

'An accident of birth,' Harlock replied. 'Just pure dumb luck the wrong brother was the eldest…' His smile faded. 'Yama cradled the murderous, ungrateful bastard in his arms even after Isora had tried to shoot him in the back for a second time. Then tried to drag him to safety on the Arcadia. I'm damned sure I'd not have been so forgiving.'

'Liar.'

The corner of Harlock's mouth twitched slightly in reply. 'I wonder how long he'll give us,' he said, deciding to change the subject. 'If he's going to be polite, he could at least send someone back with the wine…' then he smirked. 'However…' he leaned down to stare at the side of the desk. 'Damn. I can't open it…'

'Dad's secret cubby hole?'

'Father's secret cubby hole.' Harlock affirmed with a knowing smirk. 'I'm fairly sure the brat keeps a couple of bottles tucked away…'

Hannibal did the honours, fetching the two dusty bottles out of the small compartment, and blowing dust off the labels. He set them down on the desk with an appreciative smile. 'Our own label. Originals as well…'

Harlock held out his goblet. 'Do the honours. It's been a very long time since we've just had time together, you and I.'

'Too long,' Hannibal agreed as he poured. 'The last time…'

'The night before you were called back to active status,' Harlock said softly. 'It was pretty much all downhill from there.'

Caaaarkkk. They both laughed as the bird, having finished shredding the leather eyepatch clutched in one huge claw, broke the awkward silence. Both men shook their heads slightly, in the same minimalist gesture, sharing the same wry half smile, and drank slowly in companionable silence, waiting for the dawn - or their host, whichever came first.